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student painting

Art & Design

Lucy Harris

Head of the Visual Arts: Ms L Harris, BA (Hons) Surrey

Art & Photography Teacher: Miss I Lindsay, BA Oxford Brookes

Art & Photography Teacher: Miss L Garcia Gomez, MA The Arts University, Bournemouth

Mrs J Poulton | Art & Photography Assistant

Our aim is to give students the opportunity to explore and develop their personal ideas through support, critique and discussion. All courses are structured to encourage students to take risks and make imaginative leaps through the playful manipulation of an extensive range of materials and techniques to give visual form to their individual thoughts, ideas and observations, enabling them to present their own way of seeing the world.

Through the clear intention of ideas and sensitive manipulation of materials, they will each generate and explore potential lines of enquiry that are a personal response to set themes and produced from media including: oil & acrylic painting, all forms of printmaking, photography, darkroom photography and digital manipulation, film, animation, mixed-media/three-dimensional materials, chalk pastel, charcoal, watercolour and ink.

Every year we visit galleries to reinforce students’ understanding of critical art history and to enable them to gain inspiration from and draw from live paintings, drawings and sculptures.

student holding paint

“I believe I WILL ONE DAY EXHIBIT AT THE TATE MODERN”

HANNAH

Art

A Level (Edexcel)

Studying Art at A Level will develop creative thinking and problem solving skills. It also demands perseverance and encourages reflective self-review. Altogether it is a wake-up call for the brain, body and soul!

Students will be encouraged to use an extensive range of materials and techniques to give visual form to individual thoughts, ideas and observations, enabling them to present their own way of seeing the world. Through clear intention of ideas and sensitive manipulation of materials, students will each produce work that is a personal response to set themes.
Disciplines include painting and drawing, printmaking, sculpture and alternative media (mixed-media, installation, digital, photography, film and video). Students will be given time to work in most of these areas and develop a high command of skills and subject knowledge.

Art

GCSE (Edexcel)

Fine Art GCSE covers the following disciplines: painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and alternative media; photography and digital manipulation.

Students will submit portfolios containing supporting studies in the form of sketchbooks, pieces outside the sketchbook and final larger personal responses to the set themes, such as ‘Magnified Surface and Texture’ in Year 10 and ‘An Environmental Response’ in Year 11. From these set themes students will generate and explore potential lines of enquiry using a large range of media including: oil and acrylic painting, printmaking, photography, darkroom photography and digital manipulation, mixed-media/three-dimensional materials, chalk pastel, charcoal, watercolour and ink.
Throughout Years 10 and 11, visiting galleries will reinforce understanding of critical art history and enable students to draw from live paintings, drawings and sculptures.

Graphics

Graphics helps shape the world around us, incorporating printed text and data combined with exciting imagery and style. Studying this subject at A Level will develop students’ creative thinking and problem solving skills. It also demands perseverance and encourages reflective self-review. Students will design their own project with help from teachers and in turn develop a creative and open mind set. The course will test creativity and perseverance and contains many cross curricular aspects that can be of benefit to the student’s studies in a range of different ways.

Photography

GCSE

Photography GCSE gives students the opportunity to explore a wide range of themes, focusing on areas of interest that they can use in their work. The course gives students lots of independence and we positively encourage them to develop their independent and creative working and thinking skills. The course is very cross –curricular and can link to
fashion, media, sports, criminology and many other topic areas that may be of interest.

A Level

Photography gives students the freedom to record their own view of the world around them in one click. Photography makes it possible to record in seconds an inimitable image that captures profound and personal responses to the environment. Through taking imaginative risks with this medium, students are given a chance to manipulate and create unique images, and this diverse and personal response enables them to create highly individual and thought provoking photographs. Students will be encouraged to work within the disciplines of the darkroom, the studio and digital manipulation using ICT.

Contact the Art & Design Department

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